Frequency Shifting.
In many applications it is required to frequency shift a signal in the frequency domain, as shown for example by graph 10 of FIG. 1. A first signal 11 is centered around frequency F2, and most of its energy is concentrated between frequencies F1 and F3 along a frequency axis 13. Signal 12 is a frequency up-shifted replica of the first signal 11, centered around frequency F5 and residing between frequencies F4 and F6. With the exception of amplification and/or attenuation, the resulted shifted signal 12 is targeted to be a reliable replica of the first signal 11, substantially having the same characteristics, information and frequency-response waveform, and occupying the same frequency bandwidth (i.e. F6−F4=F3−F1). The first signal 11 was up-shifted by ΔF, hence F5−F2=ΔF. Down frequency shifting of a signal is also known in the art, wherein the replica is shifted to a frequency spectrum lower than the original signal.
Frequency shifting devices are known in the art and commonly make use of a mixer/filter arrangement (e.g. heterodyne). FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a prior art heterodyne-based frequency shifter 20. An original (pre-shifting) signal (i.e. the first signal 11 of FIG. 1) is received via an input port 21, which may be a connector, and fed into a mixer 22. The mixer 22 is also fed with a sine-wave signal having a frequency of F0 from a local oscillator 25. The mixer 22 is typically a nonlinear circuit or device (such as a transistor or a mixer/Schottky diode) having two input signals: The original signal from the input port 21 and a local oscillator 25 signal are multiplied by the mixer 22. One signal at the output of the mixer 22 is equal in frequency to the sum of the frequencies of the input signal and another signal equal in frequency to the difference between the frequencies of the input signals; and (if not filtered out) also the original input signal. In the case of the first signal 11 being received in the input port 21, the mixer 22 outputs will include the original first signal 11 shifted from F2 to F2+F0 and also the original first signal 11 shifted from F2 to F2−F0. In the case wherein up frequency shifting is desired, a band pass filter (BPF) 23 filters out the lower frequencies (around F2−F0) and substantially passes the higher frequency band signal to the output port 24, where the output port 24 may be a connector. In the case wherein the local oscillator frequency 25 is set to ΔF and the BPF 23 is designed to stop all frequencies other than frequencies between F4 to F6, the frequency shifter 20 will output signal 12 upon input of signal 11 in port 21. While the above description refers only to frequency dependent part of the frequency shifter 20, such frequency shifter 20 commonly includes many components involved in amplification, attenuation, limiting, and other functions that impact amplitude of the signals, but have flat frequency response in the relevant frequency spectrum, and thus for simplicity sake are not described.
A super-heterodyne frequency shifter is known in the art for radio receivers and other applications where a signal is required to be substantially frequency shifted. Such a shifter involves two (or more) single heterodyne shifters connected in cascade. FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a prior art shifter 30. The super-heterodyne shifter 30 shifts a signal input in the input port 21, and outputs the shifted signal via the output port 24 using two frequency-shifting stages. The first stage contains a first mixer 22a and a first local oscillator 25a generating a reference signal having a frequency F10, and a first BPF 23a connected to the first mixer 22a output. The signal at the first BPF 23a output serves as the input to the second heterodyne stage containing a second mixer 22b and a second local oscillator 25b generating a reference signal having a frequency F11, and a second BPF 23b connected to the output port 24. In such a shifter, the total frequency shifting will be the sum of both local sine-wave references F10+F11. Similarly, a super-heterodyne shifter may comprise more than two stages, and may be used for up, as well as down, frequency shifting.
Implementing such a heterodyne, and even more, a super-heterodyne shifter requires many components, as described above. Such implementation commonly has a high part count, leading to high cost, a physically large enclosure, added complexity, lower reliability and other disadvantages.
Wireless Home Networking.
A popular approach to home networking (as well as office and enterprise environments) is communication via a radio frequency (RF) distribution system that transports RF signals throughout a building, to and from data devices. Commonly referred to as Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), such communication makes use of the Industrial, scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency spectrum. In the United States, three of the bands within the ISM spectrum are the A band, 902-928 MHz; the B band, 2.4-2.484 GHz (commonly referred to as 2.4 GHz); and the C band, 5.725-5.875 GHz (commonly referred to as 5 GHz). Overlapping and/or similar bands are used in different regions such as Europe and Japan.
In order to allow interoperability between equipment manufactured by different vendors, few WLAN standards have evolved, as part of the IEEE 802.11 standard group, branded as WiFi (www.wi-fi.org). IEEE 802.11b describes a packet-based wireless communication using the 2.4 GHz frequency band and supporting communication rate of 11 Mb/s, IEEE 802.11a uses the 5 GHz frequency band to carry 54 MB/s and IEEE 802.11g uses the 2.4 GHz band to support 54 Mb/s.
A node/client with a WLAN interface is commonly referred to as STA (Wireless Station/Wireless client). The STA functionality may be embedded as part of the data unit, or alternatively be a dedicated unit, referred to as a bridge, coupled to the data unit. While STAs may communicate without any additional hardware (i.e. ad-hoc mode), such network usually involves Wireless Access Point (e.g. WAP or AP) as a mediation device. The WAP implements a Basic Stations Set (BSS) and/or ad-hoc mode based on Independent BSS (IBSS). STA, client, bridge and WAP will be collectively referred to hereon as a WLAN unit.
FIG. 5 is a graph 50 showing bandwidth allocation for IEEE802.11g wireless communication in the United States along frequency axis 59. In order to allow multiple communication sessions to take place simultaneously, eleven overlapping channels are defined spaced 5 MHz apart, spanning from 2412 MHz as the center frequency for channel number 1 (shown as 55), via channel 2 centered at 2417 MHz (shown as 56) and 2457 MHz as the center frequency for channel number 10 (shown as 57), up to channel 11 centered at 2462 MHz (shown as 58). Each channel bandwidth is 22 MHz, symmetrically (+/−11 MHz) located around the center frequency.
FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a WLAN unit block diagram 40. For sake of simplicity, only IEEE802.11g will be described herein. In general, the wireless physical layer signal is handled in two stages. In a transmission path, first the baseband signal (IF) is generated based on data to be transmitted, using 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) based OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) modulation technique, resulting a 22 MHz (single channel wide) frequency band signal. The signal is then up converted to the 2.4 GHz (RF), and placed in the center frequency of a required channel, and transmitted to the air via an antenna 52. Similarly, the receiving path comprises a received channel in the RF spectrum, down converted to the baseband signal (IF) wherein the data is then extracted.
The WLAN unit 40 connects to the wired medium via a wired port 41 (e.g. supporting IEEE802.3 10/100BaseT (Ethernet) interface). The physical layer of this interface is handled by 10/100BaseT PHY function block 42, converting the incoming Manchester or MLT3 modulated signal (respectively according to the 10BaseT or 100BaseTX coding) into a serial digital stream. Similarly, a WLAN outgoing digital data stream is modulated to the respective coded signal and transmitted via the wired port 41, implementing full duplex communication. The internal digital stream may be of proprietary nature of any standard one such as MII (Media Independent Interface). Such MII to Ethernet PHY 42 (i.e. Ethernet physical layer or Ethernet transceiver) can be implemented based on “LAN83C180 10/100 Fast Ethernet PHY Transceiver” available from SMSC—Standard Microsystems Corporation of Hauppauge, N.Y. U.S.A. While this function can be implemented by using a single dedicated component, in many embodiments this function is integrated into single component including other functions, such as handling higher layers. The PHY block 42 also comprises isolation magnetic components (e.g. transformer-based), balancing, surge protection, and a connector (commonly RJ-45) required for providing a proper and standard interface via the wired port 41.
For the sake of simplicity, in the above description and hereon, only an Ethernet 10/100BaseT interface will be described. However, it will be appreciated that any wired interface, being proprietary or standard, packet or synchronous, serial or parallel, may be equally used, such as WEE1394, USB, PCI, PCMCIA, or WEE1284, but not limited to. Furthermore, multiple such interfaces (being of the same type or mixed) may also be used.
In the case wherein the WLAN unit is integrated and physically enclosed within another unit (such as a data unit, e.g. computer) and does not support a dedicated and direct wired interface, part or all of the function of the PHY 42 may be obviated. MAC (Media Access Control) and higher layers are handles in a MAC layer processor 43, comprising two sub blocks, designated as 10/100BaseT MAC 53 and WEE802.11g MAC 54. The 10/100BaseT MAC 53 handles the MAC layer according to WEE802.3 MAC associated with the wired port 41. The 10/100BaseT MAC 53 may be implemented using a “LAN91C111 10/100 Non-PCI Ethernet Single Chip MAC+PHY” available from SMSC—Standard Microsystems Corporation of Hauppauge, N.Y. U.S.A, which includes both the 10/100BaseT MAC 53 and the PHY 42 functionalities. Reference is made to the data sheet of the manufacturer (Agere Systems product brief for WaveLAN™ 802.11a/b/g Chip Set and Agere Systems, WaveLAN™ WL60040 Multimode Wireless LAN Media Access Controller (MAC), Product Brief August 2003 PB03-164WLAN). Similarly, the WEE802.11 MAC 54 handles the MAC layer according to IEEE802.11g MAC associated with an antenna 52 (or other wireless port). Such WEE802.11 MAC 54 is designed to support multiple data rates and encryption algorithms, and is commonly based on embedded processors and various memories. The WEE802.11 MAC 54 may be implemented using “WaveLAN™ WL60040 Multimode Wireless LAN media Access Controller (MAC)” from Agere Systems of Allentown, Pa. U.S.A. All the bridging required in order to connect the wired IEEE802.3 MAC handled by the 10/100BaseT MAC 53 to the wireless WEE802.11g MAC 54 is also included in the MAC Layer Processor 43, allowing for integration and proper operation.
The data stream generated by the IEEE802.11g MAC 54 is converted to an OFDM-based baseband signal (and vice versa) by a baseband processor 48. In common applications, the baseband processor 48 (i.e. wireless modem and IF transceiver) is implemented by a transmitter/receiver 44 digitally processing the data stream, and an OFDM unit (i.e. I-Q modulator) 45 generating the actual signal. The communication channel in wireless environments imposes various impairments, such as attenuation, fading, multi-path, interferences, and many other impairments. The baseband processor 48 may process the data stream according to the following functions:                a. Packet framing, wherein the data from the MAC 43 is adapted and organized as packets, wherein header, CRC, preamble, control information and end-of-frame delimiter are added;        b. Scrambler;        c. Convolution encoder (such as Viterbi encoder) to allow better robustness against channel impairments such as impulse and burst noise;        d. Puncturer to reduce the required data rate;        e. Interleaver performing permutations on the packet blocks (e.g. bytes) in order to better immunize against error bursts by spreading the information; and        f. IFFT (Inverse FFT) modulator to produce separate QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) constellation sub-carriers.        
Using digital to analog conversion, the processed digital data from the transmitter portion of the transmitter/receiver 44 is used to generate the OFDM baseband signal in the modulator 45. The received OFDM baseband signal from functional block 46 is digitized by the modulator 45, processed by the receiver potion of the transmitter/receiver 44, transferred to the MAC Layer Processor 43 and PHY 42 to be transmitted via the wired port 41. Some implementations of WLAN chipsets provide the actual baseband signal, while others provide orthogonal analog I/Q modem signals which need to be further processed to provide the actual real analog form IF (Intermediate Frequency) OFDM baseband signal. In such a case, as known in the art, a Local Oscillator (LO) determining the IF frequency is used to generate a sinewave that is multiplied by the I signal, added to the Q signal multiplied by 90 degrees shifted LO signal, to produce the real analog IF baseband signal. The baseband processor 48 may be implemented based on “WaveLAN™ WL64040 Multimode Wireless LAN Baseband” from Agere Systems of Allentown, Pa. U.S.A. SA5250 Multi-Protocol Baseband from Philips Semiconductors including both baseband processor 48 and WEE802.11 MAC 54 functionalities may be alternatively used.
The WLAN Transceiver (i.e. RF-IF Converter) 46 shifts the IF OFDM baseband signal from the baseband to the ISM RF band. For example, an OFDM baseband signal symmetrically centered around 10 MHz and required to use channel 2 of FIG. 5, centered at 2417 MHz, is required to be frequency shifted by 2417-10=2407 MHz. Such frequency shifting may use many methods known in the art. A direct modulation transmitter/receiver may be used for frequency shifting, as may be the case where “WaveLAN™ WL64040 Dual-Band Wireless LAN Transceiver” from Agere Systems of Allentown, Pa. U.S.A. is used to directly convert the orthogonal I-Q analog signal to the 2.4 GHz RF band. Alternatively, superheterodyne (e.g. dual conversion) architecture may be used, as described for “SA5251 Multiband RF Transceiver” from Philips Semiconductors. The WLAN Transceiver 46 and the baseband processor 48 compose the wireless path physical layer processor 47.
A T/R Switch 49 is used to connect the antenna 52 to the transmitter path and disconnect the receiver path (to avoid receiver saturation) upon a control signal signaling transmission state of the WLAN unit 40. PIN Diode switch based design is commonly used, such as PIN Diode switch SWX-05 from MCE-KDI Integrated Products of Whippany, N.J., U.S.A. The antenna 52 is coupled via a RF filter 51 in order to ensure transmitting limited to the defined band mask (removing unwanted residual signals), and to filter out noise and out of band signal in the receiving mode. The RF filter 51 may use SAW (Surface Acoustic wave) technology, such as a “2441.8 MHz SAW Filter” from SAWTEK (A TriQuint company) of Orlando, Fla. U.S.A.
Actual implementation of the WLAN unit 40 may also involve amplifiers, attenuators, limiters, AGC (Automatic Gain Control), and similar circuits involved with signal level functions. For example, a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) is commonly connected in the receive path near the antenna (a.k.a. aerial) 52. An example of LNA includes, but not limited to, the “MAX2644 2.4 GHz SiGe, High IP3 Low-Noise Amplifier”. Similarly, a Power Amplifier (PA) may be used in the transmit path, such as the “MAX2247 Power Amplifier for IEEE802.11g WLAN”. Both the LNA and the PA are available, for example, from Maxim Integrated Products of Sunnyvale, Calif. U.S.A. For the sake of simplicity, such functions are omitted in FIG. 4 as well as in the rest of this document. Similarly, wherein either a transmitting or a receiving path is described in this document, it should be understood that the opposite path also exists for configuring the reciprocal path.
A non-limited example of a detailed block diagram of a typical physical layer processor 47 is shown in FIG. 6, including a WLAN transceiver 46 shown individually in FIG. 7. A WLAN transceiver 46 is based on direct-conversion and low intermediate-frequency techniques known in the art, such as used in the “Dual-Band Wireless LAN Transceiver WaveLAN WL54040” from Agere Systems Inc., shown as comprising I/Q modulator 67 and I/Q de-modulator 68. The RF signal received in the antenna 52 is input (via RF filter 51 and TX/RX Switch 49 as shown in FIG. 4) to the I/Q modulator 67 via port 61. The signal is fed into the two mixers 22a and 22b. Both mixers 22a and 22b are connected to a local oscillator 25 based on a quartz crystal 64. The local oscillator 25 may comprise a synthesizer, a VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator), a PLL (Phase Locked Loop), and a NCO (Number Controlled Oscillator), as known in the art. The local oscillator 25 is directly fed to mixer 22b. A sine-wave reference signal from the oscillator 25 is fed to the mixer 22a via 90 degrees phase shifter 63a. In addition to the frequency down shifting, the I/Q modulation is obtained wherein the output signal (after proper filtering, not shown in the figure) from mixer 22a is the Quadrature (Q) component over port 65a and the output from mixer 22b is the In-phase (I) component over port 65b of the received RF signal in port 61. The I/Q demodulator 68 receives I/Q components of the signal to be transmitted via ports 66b and 66a respectively. The I and Q component signals are up-frequency shifted by mixers 22c and 22d respectively, wherein the mixer 22d is directly fed from the oscillator 25, while mixer 22c is fed with a 90 degrees phase shifted signal through phase shifter 63b. The outputs of both mixers 22c and 22d are summed by an adder 76 and fed as the RF signal to be transmitted by the antenna 52 (FIG. 4) via port 62. It will be appreciated that the WLAN transceiver 46 further comprises filter, amplifiers, control, timing, and other circuits not described above and omitted for clarity and simplicity sake. As described above, the inputs and outputs of the WLAN transceiver are of analog nature and are either low IF or RF based signals. Hence, most such WLAN transceivers are considered as analog parts and do not include substantial digital processing or digital circuitry.
A baseband processor 48 is typically a digital part including a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) and other digital circuits. In order to adapt between the digital baseband processor 48 and the analog signals to and from the WLAN transceiver 46, a converters set 31 between analog and digital signals is included as the mixed signal part of the processor 48. Analog to digital converters 69a and 69b respectively convert the Q and I signal components received respectively via ports 65a and 65b, to digital representations fed to the OFDM modulator 38. Similarly, the digital Q and I components from the OFDM demodulator 37 are converted to analog using respective digital to analog converters 32a and 32b. The OFDM demodulator 38 and the OFDM modulator 37 are full digital circuits, commonly based on DSP (Digital Signal Processing).
After down frequency shifting and I/Q modulating (by IQ demodulator 67) and after being digitized by analog to digital converters 69a and 69b, the received WLAN signal is input to the OFDM modulator 38. The processing in this block includes frequency handling 39, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) 71, de-mapper 72, and a descrambler, decoder (commonly Viterbi decoder), and de-interleaver as part of block 73. The modulated signal is output via port 74 to the MAC unit 43.
On the transmit path, data received from the MAC Layer Processor 43 via port 75 is I/Q demodulated by the OFDM demodulator 37. The OFDM demodulator 37 comprises, inter-alia, a scrambler, a coder (usually Viterbi coder) and interleaver as part of block 36, feeding output data to a mapper 35, which in turn feeds to the IFFT unit 34. After cyclic extension 33, the created digital I/Q components are converted to analog by digital to analog converters 32b and 32a, respectively, and the analog signals are respectively outputted to ports 66b and 66a of the WLAN transceiver 46. It will be appreciated that the baseband processor 48 further comprises filters, amplifiers, control, timing, framing, synchronization, and other circuits not described above and omitted for clarity and simplicity sake.
Outlets
The term “outlet” herein denotes an electro-mechanical device that facilitates easy, rapid connection and disconnection of external devices to and from wiring installed within a building. An outlet commonly has a fixed connection to the wiring, and permits the easy connection of external devices as desired, commonly by means of an integrated connector in a faceplate. The outlet is normally mechanically attached to, or mounted in, a wall or similar surface. Non-limiting examples of common outlets include: telephone outlets for connecting telephones and related devices; CATV outlets for connecting television sets, VCR's, and the like; outlets used as part of LAN wiring (also referred to as “structured wiring”) and electrical outlets for connecting power to electrical appliances. The term “wall” herein denotes any interior or exterior surface of a building, including, but not limited to, ceilings and floors, in addition to vertical walls.
Wireless Coverage.
Most existing wireless technologies, such as WEE802.11x (e.g. WEE802.11a/g/b), BlueTooth™, UWB (Ultra Wide-Band) and others, are limited to tens of meters in free line of sight environment. In common building environments, wherein walls and other obstacles are present, the range of wireless communication may be dramatically reduced. As such, in most cases a single wireless unit (such as an access point) cannot efficiently cover the whole premises. In order to improve the coverage, multiple access points (or any other WLAN units) are commonly used and distributed throughout the environment.
In order to allow the access points to interconnect in order to form a single communication cluster in which all the WLAN units can communicate with each other and/or with wired data units, a wired backbone is commonly used, to which the access points are connected. Such a network combining wired and wireless segments is disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 6,330,244 to Swartz et al. Such a configuration is popular today in offices, businesses, enterprises, industrial facilities and other premises having a dedicated wiring network structure, commonly based on Category 5 cabling (also referred to as structured wiring). The access point devices interface the existing wiring based on local area network (LAN), commonly by a standard data interface such as Ethernet based 10/100BaseT.
As explained above, installing a dedicated network wiring infrastructure in existing houses is not practical. The prior art discloses using existing AC power wiring also as the wired backbone for interconnecting WLAN units. Examples of such prior art includes U.S. Pat. No. 6,535,110 to Arora et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,492,897 to Mowery, Jr., U.S. Patent Application 2003/0224728 to Heinonen et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,653,932 to Beamish et al. There are several drawbacks to using powerlines as a backbone for connecting WLAN units involves several drawbacks. The type of wiring, noise, and the general hostile environment results in a poor and unreliable communication medium, providing low data rates and requiring complex and expensive modems. In addition, the connection of a WLAN unit to the powerline requires both a wireless and a powerline modems for handling the physical layer over the two media involved, as well as a complex MAC to bridge and handle the two distinct protocols involved. As such, this solution is complex, expensive and offers low reliability due to the amount of hardware required.
U.S. patent application '9245 suggests a system 80 including an apparatus 81 for bridging between a wireless link via antenna 52 and a wired medium 83 connected via connector 82 as shown in FIG. 8. However, super-heterodyne scheme is suggested for frequency shifting the wireless signal in order to carry it over a wiring.
In consideration of the foregoing, it would be an advancement in the art to provide a method and system for frequency shifting of a signal, and in particular a wireless signal, in a simple, cost-effective, faithful, reliable, minimum parts count, minimum hardware, or using existing and available components.
Furthermore, it would be highly advantageous to have a method and system for enlarging the coverage of a wireless network, and in particular to bring the coverage to a specific required locations, in a simple, cost-effective, faithful, reliable, minimum parts count, minimum hardware, or using existing and available components.
Similarly, it would be highly advantageous to have a method and system for seamlessly interconnecting separated or isolated coverage areas, in a simple, cost-effective, faithful, reliable, minimum parts count, minimum hardware, or using existing and available components.
Furthermore, it would be highly advantageous to have a method and system for using a wireless signals, wireless technologies, and wireless components for wired communication.